Roman Catholic National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham

The Roman Catholic National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, at Houghton St Giles in North Norfolk, is one of the most important places of Christian pilgrimage in England — the centre of the ancient devotion to Our Lady of Walsingham, often called "England's Nazareth". Established in 1934 around the medieval Slipper Chapel, which dates from about 1340, the shrine draws tens of thousands of pilgrims each year, Catholic and Anglican alike, who come to pray to Our Lady of Walsingham in a place hallowed by nearly a thousand years of devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The story of Walsingham begins in the eleventh century. According to tradition, in 1061 a pious noblewoman named Richeldis de Faverches experienced a series of visions of the Virgin Mary at the village of Walsingham in Norfolk, in which she was shown the house of the Holy Family at Nazareth and instructed to build a replica of it. Lady Richeldis duly had a building known as the "Holy House" constructed at Walsingham, and this became the focus of a shrine and a place of pilgrimage. About a century later the Holy House passed to the Augustinian canons, who incorporated it into the great Priory of Walsingham. Through the Middle Ages the shrine flourished as one of the foremost places of pilgrimage in all of Christendom, drawing pilgrims from across Europe and many royal visitors — kings of England came to walk the last mile to the shrine barefoot in devotion.

It was in the context of this great medieval pilgrimage that the Slipper Chapel was built, around 1340, at Houghton St Giles, about a mile from Walsingham. This little chapel was the last of the wayside "station" chapels on the pilgrims' route, and it was here, by tradition, that pilgrims would remove their shoes — their "slippers" — to walk the final "Holy Mile" to the shrine barefoot. The medieval shrine, however, was destroyed at the Reformation: in 1538 the Priory of Walsingham was dissolved, and the revered statue of Our Lady was taken away and burned, bringing the great pilgrimage to an end.

For three centuries Walsingham lay desolate, but in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the devotion was revived. The Slipper Chapel, which had survived the centuries put to secular use, was restored, and in 1934 it was established as the Roman Catholic National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, restoring Catholic pilgrimage to this holy place after four hundred years. The cult of Our Lady of Walsingham received a series of solemn recognitions from the Catholic Church: in 1954 Pope Pius XII granted the canonical coronation of the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, and in 2015 Pope Francis raised the Slipper Chapel and the whole shrine to the dignity of a minor basilica.

The shrine has grown since its re-establishment, with new buildings added over the years, including the large Chapel of Reconciliation, built in 1980 to accommodate the great crowds of pilgrims. Yet it remains, at its heart, a place of simplicity and prayer, centred on the ancient Slipper Chapel. Each year tens of thousands of pilgrims — Roman Catholics, but also Anglicans and Christians of other traditions, for Walsingham is honoured by Catholics, by some Anglicans, and by Western-rite Orthodox alike — come to pray to Our Lady of Walsingham. Indeed, Walsingham is unusual in having both a Roman Catholic National Shrine here at the Slipper Chapel and an Anglican Shrine in the village itself, making it a focus of Marian devotion across the Christian traditions.

The shrine stands at Houghton St Giles, near the village of Walsingham, in the gentle countryside of North Norfolk. The medieval village of Little Walsingham, with the ruins of the great priory, the Anglican Shrine and its Holy House, and the pilgrim "Holy Mile" lie close by, along with the Georgian town of Wells-next-the-Sea on the coast, the great houses and estates of North Norfolk, the beaches and nature reserves of the Norfolk coast, and the wider countryside of the county, with the city of Norwich within easy reach.

From the visions of Lady Richeldis in 1061 and the building of the Holy House, through the great medieval pilgrimage and the building of the Slipper Chapel around 1340, the destruction of the shrine at the Reformation, and its triumphant revival in 1934 and elevation to a basilica in 2015, the Roman Catholic National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham gathers nearly a thousand years of English Marian devotion into one holy place. The centre of the devotion to "England's Nazareth", it remains a living shrine and a place of pilgrimage for tens of thousands — one of the holiest places in England.